Take your point on not being too down hearted, but we've been battered in 2 recent league games. It's not encouraging.
Agree the manner of the defeats is the scary thing. Any team in league one will lose games but how many go up after getting beaten by 4 goals twice before October is out?
Been saying this for weeks. Our midfield might be talented but is weak an gets over run We are not man City we haven't got the players to play like Man City Need to start being a bit pragmatic. properly stock the midfield and start to control games. LJ really needs to show he's learning from defeats. but Its not obvious.
Also our next 2 games are shelf wed away and Ipswich at home. That could easily turn into 4 defeats on the spin and we could be mid table at the start of December.
so, doyle, onien and geads not good enough and a return to 'flanno kicking' sounds about par for the course. we have not defended balls into the box with any sort of conviction all season, today up to the point i switched off there were three uncontested headers two of which ended as goals and the third should have...general play first half was of two well matched teams and it could so easily have been 2-2 at half time. just getting warmed up for the 2nd half and they get another corner (ball into the box) and another decent header 3-1 then geads sees red, end of contest. doyle can handle the rough side of things, he proved this within his first couple of games as players made him a target and he brushed them off with ease, i have no idea what has changed but over recent games he seems far less involved while cirkin has improved game upon game. onien is not crap and has not turned into a bad player, his work breaking up play by getting tackles and headers in was excellent early season and i know i am not alone in thinking that his shoulder injury is hindering him somewhat, living with the 'fear' that the wrong knock will give him pain again cannot be helping (we all protect ourselves from pain usually without thinking about it) and i have previously said he at least needs a break but really needs to get it sorted. last couple of games (including his effort today) geads has started to look more like the player we know he is, another one we feared was playing through injury and not at his best...i think he has earned a little bit of patience from the fans afore we chuck him on the heap as well eh? flanno possibly most improved player but he is still flanno and he will still make his mistakes, that said he is not responsible for marking everyone in the box and lately i have noticed too many players getting 'free runs' into our area, yes he could have done better but he is not alone in that. overall, they were well up for this game, played some very good stuff and even without the red card they probably deserved a win but it would have been a tight, narrow one that we may even have nicked ourselves...it was never a 5-1 game in my eyes, i am gutted but there are plenty of games to go, plenty of learning to do but i agree with those that have said we need to make good use of the window, no matter if we go on a winning streak from now till then there are areas of the squad that obviously need improving.
Not read all of the comments, so apologies if the following has already been said. It seems to me, there are a growing number of teams that seem to have figured us out. Portsmouth, Charlton and now Rotherham. I can't see us getting anything from the return fixtures unless something changes as I feel they've got us pegged. What worries me is more teams will see what it takes to beat us, and there's potentially 30% of the teams in the league that have enough to play us off the park and beat us. If that figure is the case, then we can kiss promotion goodbye.
It's been like that my whole life watching the lads. The only time I've seen us with a midfield that would dominate games with their presence and ability is when Big Sam brought in Jan to play with Yann. That's the sort of player that we desperately need to be beef us up in the centre of the pitch.
Actually, I can't remember 09 ever standing out in midfield. The best I've seen him play was when he was our centre half. He had some outstanding games for us playing there.
I think he will be. I'm pissed off today and worried about what the next few weeks may look like with his "streaky" past but if we ARE looking to build something sustainable then it has to be over the next 2-3 years with each transfer window building the squad in a certain way
I think Johnson talked a few weeks ago about Using Alves in midfield Maybe these cup games coming up he could give it a try
What does he offer? His defensive stats are as good as or better than pretty much any other player in the squad. I've seen him regularly look more than handy around the box in past seasons too but unfortunately he's having to do so much work protecting the defence that he's not had the opportunity to do it much recently.
Today was crying out for Evans as CDM, even if it meant leaving Embleton on the bench and going with a proper 4-3-3. Nothing wrong with a point away to a strong team. Johnson went all out and it cost us
4 things improve us. 1. Play whoever compliments Dan Neil the most next to him, but it's not 09. So, we either swap 09 and Winchester around or Evans plays till January, then we revisit it. 2. We need a pacey centre back to play alongside whoever the other centre back is. 3. We work alot harder in training to stop crosses coming in. 4. We play a little less pretty at the back, so we don't shoot ourselves in the foot.
If you mean instead of O'Nien then I dunno, didn't we lose the first half 2-1 with him and the second 3-0 with Evans? Doesn't mean a lot necessarily because it's not that straightforward but it doesn't make a great case for him playing ahead of O'Nien. If you mean play them together then yeah in hindsight that would have been better.
Spot on we need an extra man in midfield and just two up front against the better teams in this league especially away from home and have the cavalry on the bench for the second half. That game could have been won to-day with the right tactics, even with the wrong ones, we were still in it at half time, we made them look like world beaters, by sticking to the wrong tactics and that is down to the manager no matter what spin he puts on it..
I'm rarely this negative mate and people see games differently but I though we were bloody awful today from start to finish We haven't learned from recent defeats and its looking like teams have sussed out how to play against us. We have the players but our tactics at the moment are all wrong. We are far too open and just allow teams to play. Losing 4-0 and 5-1 in this league is unacceptable. Hopefully we can turn it around quickly starting on Tuesday
